


“I’m still struggling to believe any of this is real.”

by LadyLaviniya



Series: Sleeping Star Swans [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Prompt Fic, Sunsets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:43:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11893152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLaviniya/pseuds/LadyLaviniya
Summary: How long has it been since those days when everything wrong felt like the world was ending? Where did the time go? How things change.





	“I’m still struggling to believe any of this is real.”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justanoutlaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanoutlaw/gifts).



Eleven years, three months, one week, and two days. Or was it twelve years, two months, three weeks and five days? One was for her “family,” the other for love. But which was which?

“It doesn’t matter now,” she mumbles to her coffee cup between her last few sips, “Really, it doesn’t.”

She steals a faded red throw pillow from the couch to place behind her seat at the window. A messy path among the plethora of cardboard boxes packed to the brim with stuff—more hers than Emma’s—sit untouched all throughout the bare living room. Just goes to show money couldn’t buy happiness. It didn’t even help much. Now it’s just... junk.

Junk Emma’s helping her sort through—what to keep, what to donate—but junk all the same.

As she nurses her cold Starbucks and stares out the window, the white sun with its golden outline is setting in the west, leaving the sky glowing peach, blending muted pinks and periwinkle, and all the shades of red in between. Were it not for the fact she’s in a town with the most painful pun in its name, in the process of moving in with the girl who swore she was better off alone, Lily would have enjoyed the rare moment she gets to witness such a beautiful phenomenon.

And yet...

“Hey,” Emma says, coming from the far end of the room, “I thought the deal was you’d take care of half the living room while I ordered pizzas. ... Lily?”

“Hn?” She turns. “What?”

Emma folds her arms, smiling as she approaches, wading through the sea of boxes. “If you could find the camera I’d take a picture of you like that.” When she gets close enough, she pushes Lily’s sock-clad feet so she can sit on the other side, leaning her head against the windowpane, and rests a hand on Lily’s knee. “Where are you? Take me to you.”

“I guess...” Lily shrugs, turning back to the window and laying her head against it also. “I’m still struggling to believe any of this is real.” From the corner of her eye she catches Emma’s brow furrowing right before she sits up.

“What, us moving in together?”

“Well, yeah.” They lock eyes again. The vibrant colors of the sunset only enhance Emma’s beauty, even as she’s frowning and breaking their gaze to search for an answer on the floor. They pick up when Lily pries her hand away from her cup and places it over Emma’s on her knee. “The last time we met, you left me at a bus station and said you were better off alone after I begged you for help. You made it pretty clear you wanted nothing to do with me. Next thing I know, a decade later,  _you’re_ looking for _me_?

“This last month has been so surreal, I just... I’m just waiting for it to... I dunno, stop. Like, I keep expecting I’m gonna wake up at that bus station, away from all this—” she gestured at the mess before them with a sweep of her hand before placing it back atop Emma’s, “—away from you and the life we’re trying to build? Good things don’t happen to me, Emma. They especially don’t happen to you when I’m around, so...”

Emma sighs. “We literally just signed the lease, Lily, you’re not moving out before you’ve even moved in. Look...”

She plucks her near-empty cup from Lily’s hands and makes it vanish before her very eyes. Then Emma slips warm fingers beneath Lily’s chin and lifts her gaze.

“You had the right idea all those years ago: we need to stick together. But the timing was shit. _So shit_.” Lily cracks a halfhearted smile. “I’m not going to push you away again. Not like that. I promise. We had no idea what the world wanted from us back then, but now we do, and we can handle it. Yeah? Or... you know, we’ll figure it out. Together. Alright?”

The scoff Lily emits is soft, but better paired with the beginnings of a smirk. “Who hit you with the optimism stick today?” It doesn’t sound half as rude out her mouth than it does in her head, but Emma doesn’t let her get away with it, and removes her hand to plant it on her hip as she stands.

“Unpack at least one of these boxes and I’ll let you have a slice of pizza. I’ll put on Buffy. Faith, Hope and Trick?”

Lily nods. “Sounds good.”

There is little that remains of the beautiful sunset beyond the faint pale blues of light gone away, and the subsequent calmer, bluer hues of the late evening sky. If she squints, she can almost make out the faint dots of stars.

Almost.

Behind her, Emma turns on a light. Lily looks down at her wrist, at her star birthmark. She fingers her necklace, and holds it to her wrist, capturing the star in the mouth of the crescent with her skin acting as negative space.

It doesn’t matter now how many days it’s been since their first and last meeting. Really, it doesn’t. What matters is the sun will always make way for the moon and coax the shy stars out to play, and in return, the moon will say her last goodnights and lead those same little stars home.

What matters is Emma, her sun, is here now, and Lily, the moon, is allowed to stay.

She gets up, tosses the pillow to the couch, and walks right into a box that protests when her foot hits its side. She staggers with a curse at hand and sits back down by the window.

She definitely doesn’t need to pinch herself. This is definitely real.


End file.
